EPP Editors' Reflections on CPAE Vol. 17: József Illy
Documentary editing is a meticulous process. Thorough research and skillful attention to detail are expected standards among practitioners in the field. One thing people outside of the field may not consider is that editors work to avoid injecting their present day understanding of historical events into their annotation of documents. Separating one's knowledge of events as they later unfolded from factual details of the historical record requires rigor and balance. Editorial work and editorializing are distinct and separate things. Einstein Papers Projects editors engage in the former, working to contextualize facts without the interference of hindsight. Project historians and researchers spend years sorting, analyzing and researching the materials that go into our volumes. Understanding this makes it especially interesting to find out what our editors think of the documents they edit, beyond the confines of the documentary editing process. Here, EPP Editor, József Illy records his impressions of Einstein's thoughts on unified field theory as expressed to Rabindranath Tagore in the forthcoming Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 17.
In the period covered by this volume, Einstein continued his struggle for a unified field theory of gravity and electromagnetism. He could not escape thinking of what this theory would mean. Einstein defined physics as "an attempt at a conceptual reconstruction of a model of the real world as well as its law-like structure." (Doc. 46). His conviction that the world is rational and intelligible was stronger than his confidence in his theories: "I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion." -- he told Tagore (Doc. 372). He even subordinated science to this "religion" saying that "the most important function of art and science was to communicate this cosmic religious sense." (Doc. 462).